Eco Friendly House And Garden

Knowing what a plant loves best can make your eco friendly garden tick over nicely!

Eco friendly gardening isn’t all about using organic chemicals and using cold bath water – it’s about eco thinking too.

Yes, by reducing the chemicals you use and using ‘old’ water – you can make a significant difference to the energy demands of your garden – no matter how simple it is.  However, by thinking ahead you can reduce these even further without too much effort!

Just as an overflowing desk results in lower output and the fridge at the wrong temperature wastes food – a plant in the wrong place or with too many other plants around it can be a waste too!

Try planting 10 healthy plants into the same pot.  Even if you water them properly and they are all in the right light – they won’t all grow.  Plants have requirements just like people, food, animals and the Earth – so find out what they like best and you are on to a winner!

photo credit: brockvicky

Good Plant Husbandry:
Here are some simple things to consider with your garden – whether it’s existing or you are planning for the spring. 

A few minutes now can save a lot of time next year – for example with having to re-pot a fast growing plant, water a plant in direct sunshine more, treat a sick plant for disease, increase feeding for plants in the wrong soil etc.  It’s all your time wasted – and its wasted energy and resources too! So;

1) Plant the right plant in the right place according to it’s needs – not where it ‘looks best’!  If you don’t have space in direct sunlight for your sunflowers – then don’t plant them this year – plant something less sunshine dependant instead.

2) Use mulch to prevent splashing onto delicate foliage – not only will this make ornamental plants last longer by increasing the time the leaves are beautiful – but it reduces the water needs of the ground and will offer a haven for helpful invertebrates in your garden. 

3) Plant at ideal distances from other plants to improve ventilation- as every fruit tree grower knows; if you don’t have enough space between branches you will get less fruit in the first place and that any fruit you do grow could rot on the branches anyway!  Just as a crowed train gets sweaty an unhealthy – so do overcrowded plants.  They lose leaves, grow too fast (to try to out compete the neighbouring plants) and are more susceptible to disease.

4) Clear away dead leaves and dying plants when spotted- as the decaying matter can harbour fungus, encourage unwanted insects to the area and get to damp over the winter.  Rotten or dead leaves can be good for composting or mulching – but not while attached to the live plant!  Damp and disease can spread up the dying leaf from contact with the ground and infect or damage the healthy part of the plant in the same way that your arm in a bowl of cold water could make the rest of your body catch a chill! 

And, organic waste can be harmful too! Fallen leaves should be composted rather than left on garden plants as they can stain or damage flowering plants. Yes they are all over woodlands – but trees dont usually have leaves at ground level! A even grass cuttings can be a problem for certain plants as large amounts of cuttings can alter the ph of the soil – and could put certain plants under too much stress as a result – so make sure you are not going to imbalance your soils if growing delicate plants.

5) Keep land and paths even to prevent puddles and flooding- by decreasing the chances of surface water collecting in your garden, you are increasing the chances of this ‘free’ water being used by your plants rather than evaporating away!  Also, puddles forming in badly draining soil could in fact rot your plants where they sit!  Either way – make sure that you watch the way the water flows when you water the plants yourself, and aim to ‘fix’ any areas that hold water for any length of time before there is a real rainstorm!

6) Prune and shape plants well to maximise their growth and appearance – by knowing how each plant likes to grow and being aware of it’s ‘mature’ shape, your pruning could help it to grow more efficiently.  If your plant wants to grow in a ball and you keep trimming it in a square – you could be causing the plant to use more nutrients from the soil to keep throwing out new shoots all the time.  If you want a square plant – then try to plant one of them instead to save time and retain the nutrients in the ground! 

Also, if you grow a plant for it’s flowers – then make sure that you have pruned the stems and shoots to offer the most flower heads on stems that can actually support the fully developed flowers in the first place!  Imagine after several months of growing the flowers – they are too big and make the plant droop, or the stems to snap under the extra weight of a huge dahlia or something!

7) Learn which plants are invasive or likely to grow faster than others - this will help you do be quite ruthless with the pruning and planning for next year.  It means that you can plan to keep them in check during the growing season so as not to cover over or crowd and annual plants; let them grow more over the winter to cover more ground; or remove them completely if they take too much time to control or they are actually a ‘pest’ species that are sprouting up new plants from the cuttings – like buddleia or bindweed!

Planning ahead is always great for eco thinking!

Everyone is thinking about home-grown food now – so here are a few less thought of tips to help you on your way!

We all know to get a water butt and to not use a powerful sprinkler during the heat of the day, so I thought of some less obvious one that can really make a difference.

1) Why Grow Potatoes?
You can grow just about anything these days after a bit of reading up, so why just grow anything?

There are certain vegetables that are very easy to buy at stores and very reasonably priced local foods – so why grow them yourself? Why not focus your time and energy on the foods that you can’t easily get hold of or that are very expensive to buy.

For example a lot of berries and currents are extraordinarily expensive to buy, but you can easily grow your own in a corner of your yard and pick them when you need them. And if you have a small greenhouse or poly-tunnel you could easily be growing things that are not normally found in your local area but are suitable for this environment.

2) Will They Grow Themselves?
There are many crops that need a lot of care and attention to grow from seed or when potting on. There are also many plants that are energy or water intensive.

Think about these restraints on your time and the environmental costs before taking on a demanding crop – don’t just think about the end result.

It is probably a lot less energy-intensive for a large farm to grow such crops and ship them to your store than for every household to try to grow their own. Increasing the scale of production always lowers costs and resources.

Also, out of season crops need more attention as do out-of-environment crops. Out-of-environment crops are those that can’t be grown without plenty or extras – like protection, fertilisers (natural or not) and other considerations.

Basically they are fruits and vegetables that are perfectly suited to a particular environment – which isn’t where you live! So, if you want to try something different that needs more resources, then make sure you put every effort in to nurturing it; hitting a bumper crop and then eating every last piece of edible material it produces!

Seriously, if you are going to be putting 3 months or more of intensive effort into growing vegetable A, then you had better make sure you follow that care through to the end. What a waste it would be if you started off ok and then went on holiday or got ‘too busy’ and let them die. What an even worse waste of resources that would be!

3) Are They Attractive To Bugs?
Make sure you find out which fruits and veg are less attractive to pests and disease before you start planting.  And when they are less atrractive to pests – pests all have their own ‘cycle’ so avoiding this can sometimes be advantageous and plant-saving!

There is nothing worse than getting a problem with your crops and then finding the only solution is to apply chemical cures or simply to start over! What a waste!

Sometimes it’s just a matter of choosing the right planting dates or using the right natural protection. For example, the first round of runner beans I planted when I first started growing veg got totally destroyed by hungry slugs (regardless of my organic slug repellent) whereas some I planted much later in the season never even got one bite to them – the whole crop survived!

Make sure you do your research in advance so that you know all the info before you lose your first crop!

Join me in a few days for Part 2 , bringing you some more unusual but extremely helpful tips…..